Religious Landscapes and Issues for Development Actors: Country Mapping

The World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD) continues its country level mapping, in collaboration with GIZ, focusing on key religious and development work in five countries. The first is Nigeria. The work involves a thorough review of scholarship and available materials, focused development policy links. Outputs will include country reports, targeted issue briefs, and published interviews. The central objective is to encourage engagement with faith-inspired actors to achieve development goals.

A team of researchers, under the leadership of Katherine Marshall, will draw from WFDD’s previous country mapping work in Cambodia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Guatemala, and Senegal to expand to five additional countries. This country-level approach can make significant contributions to understanding the nature of faith-linked development work, support national dialogue on implications and lessons and indicate general conclusions with broader applicability. A first step is understanding key leaders and institutions, challenges, and best practices among faith-inspired actors. Building knowledge and encouraging engagement and collaboration has the potential to improve the quality of development policies and interventions by multiple stakeholders including faith-based actors, civil society, government, and international organizations.

Background

From 2006 to 2017, the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD), in collaboration with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, embarked on an ambitious research and policy review program linking leading global development issues and their poorly understood religious dimensions. The initial phase of the research focused on regional evaluations of trends, and involved a series of global workshops and consultations with scholars, religious leaders, NGO representatives, and policymakers; publication of 28 regional and issue reports and more than 200 interviews with practitioners; and development of an extensive Religion and Development Database. A subsequent phase focused on country-level mapping, involving consultations with scholars, religious leaders, NGO representatives, and policymakers; publication of 30 country and issue reports; and more than 270 interviews with practitioners.